The investigation into the incident is ongoing, officials said.
A 52-year-old man died and another was seriously injured after falling 1,000 feet down a steep Alaskan mountain in Denali National Park. According to The independent, The two-member climbing team was climbing a technical route on Mount Johnson when they fell from the summit on April 25. Park officials said Robbi Mecus died from injuries sustained in the fall while climbing a route on Mount Johnson known as “the escalator.” They added that the approximately 1,500-meter route involves navigating a mix of steep rocks, ice and snow.
The other climber, a 30-year-old woman from California, was seriously injured. She was rescued Friday and flown to a hospital in Anchorage, park officials said exhaust pipe. Another climbing party on the route witnessed the fall and alerted the Alaska Regional Communication Center about 10:45 p.m., the National Park Service said in a statement.
“The reporting party then descended on the accident victims and confirmed that one climber had died in the fall. The rescuers dug a snow cave and treated the surviving climber’s injuries all night,” the statement said.
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On Friday, a rescue helicopter and two mountain climbers arrived in the area and rescued the injured woman. “Together, the ranger and the injured patient were taken on a short flight to a flat glacier area and then loaded into the helicopter for the flight to Talkeetna,” the statement said. “The patient was transferred to a LifeMed air ambulance at the Talkeetna State Airport for further care,” it added.
The helicopter and rangers later returned to the mountain to recover the body of the deceased climber. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Denali National Park and Preserve is located about 240 miles (386 km) north of Anchorage. In 2022, Australian solo climber Matthias Riimi, 35, was reported dead four days after going missing on Denali. The same year, a Japanese climber died after falling through an ice bridge into a crevasse on Mount Hunter. In June 2022, Fernando Birman, 48, a climber from New Jersey, also died at an altitude of 6,000 meters while trying to reach the top of the mountain.
